Julieann Moran: Synodal Pathway Update
| Baptised and Sent Sets out Seven Priorities for Renewal |
| Julieann Moran and Fr Declan Hurley offer their insights into the seven priorities for the Irish Synodal Pathway, as set out in Baptised and Sent. First published for the Synodal Pathway Assembly in October, Baptised and Sent is well worth reading in its own right, offering a clear and hopeful vision for the future of the Church by setting out seven key priorities rooted in our shared baptism. It draws together several years of listening, prayer, and discernment, and returns to the fundamental question first posed in 2021:“What does God want from the Church in Ireland at this time?” At the heart of Baptised and Sent is the conviction that baptism is the foundation of Christian dignity, unity, and mission. Through baptism, every person – lay and and ordained, young and old – is called to discipleship and to share responsibility for the life and mission of the Church. From this shared calling flow the seven priorities that emerged from voices across the country. The Seven Priorities 1. Belonging The first priority is fostering a Church of welcome, inclusion, and safety—where every person can find a home in community and in Christ, especially those who have felt excluded or marginalised. 2. Co-responsibility and Lay Ministry This priority emphasises empowering all the baptised, women and men alike, to share responsibility for leadership and mission through new models of ministry and decision-making. 3. Family Recognising the family as the domestic Church, this priority focuses on supporting families as the primary place of faith transmission and strengthening their connection with parishes and schools. 4. Formation and Catechesis There is a clear call for lifelong, Christ-centred formation that is experiential and equips people for discipleship in today’s world. This formation is rooted not only in learning, but also in liturgy and sacramental life, so that prayer and worship become living sources of faith, understanding, and mission. 5. Healing The document acknowledges deep wounds within the Church, especially those caused by abuse. It commits to accountability, justice, reconciliation, and the creation of safe spaces for survivors and for all who carry pain. 6. Women Recognising women’s gifts, leadership, and co-responsibility at every level of Church life is named as a matter of justice, credibility, and faithfulness to the Gospel. 7. Youth The final priority focuses on engaging young people with authenticity—listening to their hopes and challenges, offering them meaningful roles in leadership and mission, and walking with them in faith. Together, these seven priorities invite the Church in Ireland to continue its journey as a listening, participatory, and mission-centred community, grounded in baptism and open to the future the Holy Spirit is unfolding. Watch the full interview with Wendy Grace from TheWay.ie below https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYOCdztKtUU |
| Baptised and Sent in Lent |
 While we are still in the season of Advent, we are already looking ahead, preparing resources and inviting parishes, schools, and groups across Ireland to prepare for a shared journey of prayer and reflection during Lent next year. Next Lent, you are warmly invited to take part in a new set of reflective resources inspired by Baptised and Sent. These resources will be officially launched on 11 January 2026, the |
| Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, a fitting moment to reflect on baptism as the foundation of our identity, dignity, and mission.Grounded in this conviction, the resources draw us back to the heart of Christian life: being reborn in Christ and sent by the Spirit in service of the Gospel. Each week offers a simple and accessible structure for prayer, Gospel reflection, and shared conversation, drawing on key insights from Baptised and Sent. The themes of belonging, healing, renewal, and mission flow from the document’s call to see baptism as the unifying foundation for the renewal of the Church in Ireland, “the entry point to a life of faith, a gateway to mission, and the root and foundation on which to build a Christian life.”Through these Lenten reflections, all of us – lay, religious, and ordained – are encouraged to rediscover who we are as God’s people, to listen attentively to the Holy Spirit, and to take concrete steps towards living our baptismal calling more deeply. |
About the Women’s issue: I notice in the video that the interviewer, Wendy Grace, dismisses the present reality of inequality in the church (12’12”):
“The church is the one place I felt the most gender equality”. Issue? What issue?
This is worrying in the light of the recent Vatican Commission’s report on women deacons with its appalling theology and anthropology.
Brendan Hoban has called it “a kick in the teeth for Catholic women”, as the well battered can of equality is being kicked down the synodal path.
There is no true synodality without the radical Gospel equality of women.
A few crumbs and a thin icing of equality on top of the patriarchal cake will not substitute for the Bread of Life and will not feed the people.
https://www.westernpeople.ie/opinion/another-kick-in-the-teeth-for-catholic-women_arid-80080.html
Pope Leo XIV should speak ex Cathedra on the issue of a female Diaconate, once and for all.
The Conditions for such a teaching are well known.
From the point of view of the Holy Ghost, either a Female Diaconate is Divinely willed or it isn’t.
We don’t need endless studies. A supreme Pontiff has the authority to finally put this to bed.
A Frenchman told me that the power of the French President to declare (nuclear) war single-handed adds to his prestige but cannot be used in practice. The aura surrounding the papacy used to centre on the magic word “infallibility”, but we hear it very rarely nowadays, largely due to the Humanae Vitae flop.
Papal infallibility, as defined at Vatican I, is a much more restricted power than people expected to come out of that council; and only one attempt to use it has happened since, in 1950. Some theologians argue that even that attempt did not meet the stringent requirements of Vatican I.
If Leo XIV were to issue a solemn edict banning women from ordination he would be seen as attempting to shore up a discredited model of church government and as pushing against two most powerful orthodoxies emerging in the present church, namely, the urge toward collegiality and synodality, which goes back to Vatican II, and the urge to give women roles in the church that convincingly reflect their equality with men.
Today authority has to earn its spurs. Some see it as catastrophic that hallowed traditions have to stand the test of open discussion and critical thinking, but anyone concerned with truth and fairness will be ready to undergo this test.
Joe, the authority given to St. Peter by Christ the King, most certainly doesn’t have to earn its spurs, as you say.
My main assertion stands: either an ordained female Diaconate IS the will of the most Holy Trinity or it ISN’T.
I note you only pointed out your views of the consequences of an ex Cathedra Teaching rejecting a female Diaconate. For completeness, you should have also pointed out the consequences of ex Cathedra acceptance, as you see it.
My own view is of course, that the issue of a female Diaconate will be in perpetual discernment until we get a Pope who adheres to a principle taught by our Blessed Lord during the Sermon on the Mount.
Matthew 5:37 is a brilliant principle!
Dermot, your IS or ISN’T dichotomy may not work very well. Jesus gave the apostles the ability to discern and decide using their own wits in response to reading the signs of the times. “Whatever you bind on earth, will be bound in heaven.” The arguments against women’s ordination are all a matter of absolutizing past practice (itself quite possibly misread — in the insistence that the deaconesses of the early church were not sacramental deacons, or in the failure to recall a world in which abbesses were equal to bishops in authority and power), whereas the arguments for women’s ordination refer to the present situation, to the changed status of women in our culture, to their readiness to serve as deacons and priests, to the pastoral needs of today, to the success of female ordination in our sister churches. The process of discernment, led by the Spirit, rather than summary reference to an old rulebook, is the Christian method of dealing with such complex disputed questions.
Joe@5 an excellent reply.
Joe at #4.
My assertion that a female Diaconate either is or is not the will of the Most Holy Trinity still stands.
If a process of discernment is truly led by the Holy Ghost, and those involved listen to him, the will of the most Holy Trinity will be arrived at.
Binding and loosing has limits: those powers are limited by Divine Law.
In “Ordinatio Sacerdotalis “, the Late John Paul II states:
“I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”
Ergo, in the case of Female Presbyterate, the Holy Ghost has a definitive View.
Given that Diaconate, Presbyterate and Episcopate form one (not three) Sacrament, it isn’t unreasonable of me to deduce that the Holy Ghost has a definite view on Female Diaconate and Female Episcopate.
Agreed, Dermot, that female deacons would open the door to female presbyters and bishops.
Unfortunately, if a Pope says something, however solemnly, it does not follow automatically that the Holy Spirit is speaking (“Ergo”!).
If the magisterium is viewed as a sausage-machine for automatically producing infallible pronouncements, then we are stuck with quite a stack of them: the buying and selling of slaves is in accord with divine and natural law (Pius IX, 1866), Jews are condemned to perpetual servitude (Paul IV, 1555, reaffirmed by the popes over the following two centuries). When Cardinal Ratzinger tried to elevate John Paul II’s pronouncement to the status of an infallible teaching (as others had tried to do for Humanae Vitae, despite its author’s denial that he was speaking infallibility), he unwittingly showed up the archaic nature of this sort of thinking. Let the whole church have open discussion on the contested issues; this is more likely to produce a convincing Spirit-led discernment. The chief argument for no change in regard to Jews, slaves, contraception, and female ordination is not the authority of the latest papal defender (Paul IV, Pius IX, Paul VI, or John Paul II) but rather an appeal to the past: that is how we have always thought and taught and we cannot have been wrong. Well, Vatican II replaced centuries of papal anti-Jewish utterances with a simple step back to Romans 9-11, Leo XIII overruled Pius IX on slavery, Humanae Vitae’s non-reception has made it a dead letter, and we can reasonably expect something similar re female ordination. Incidentally, if in the manner of Ludwig Ott’s Denzinger-theology, one wants to attach the magic label “De Fide” to the ban on female ordination, should one not be able to identify the point in church history at which it was formally declared that women cannot be ordained? The early church spoke of female deacons without apparent nervousness that that could be interpreted sacramentally. The question of ordaining women did not come up for discussion before the 20th century (as far as I have heard). That apparently means that John Paul II was the first to make a formal declaration on it. Perhaps all that means is that he was reinforcing previously voiced doctrinal scruples — as the chief objection to female ordination. A fuller review of church history and of present insights and needs (more than the Vatican’s recent commission attempted) could well weaken that objection.
Hats off to Theologians who continue to wrestle with questions of faith, reason and the modern world. It is their intellectual struggle with these questions that allows the church to advance Catholic thought.
I agree Joe, that not everything a Pope says is necessarily the will of the Holy Ghost.
Let us examine once again the last Sentence of “Ordinatio Sacerdotalis”:
“I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”
Definitively to be held: for me that is the will of the Holy Ghost on Female Presbyterate. For all time.
Roma Locuta…..
“Ordinatio Sacerdotalis” is a Post Vatican II Document issued by a Pope who was at the Council. His academic qualifications are impeccable.
I believe that John Paul II clearly enunciated the will of Heaven on Female Presbyterate. Logically, a Female Episcopate is also not the will of Heaven as, Diaconate, PresbyTerate and Episcopate form one Sacrament.
Back to to the Female Diaconate: Heaven does have a will in this Regard. Let us Hope that by following the will of the Holy Ghost, Perpetual discernment for political reasons ends, and at some point a Pope (it won’t be Leo XIV) will teach Definitively on this.
Anyhow Joe, all will be explained at the General Judgment. What an interesting day that will be!